Monday, December 18, 2017

I finally finished the Berthe Morisot portrait that I wrote about a few posts back. It's somewhat large (about a meter tall). I'm happy with it. However I was slightly disappointed with the texture of the paper for charcoal (it's meant for etchings, I think) because it didn't allow me to manipulate the charcoal as much as I'd like once I laid down the original lines. Next time I'm going with something smoother. Suggestions are welcome (not that toothy Ingres texture though please. The physical sensation of drawing on that gives me the heebie-jeebies).

The finished portrait of painter Berthe Morisot, by Ciana Pullen.

The original photo of Morisot that I worked from. I also looked at other photos of her over her life to get a better idea of what she looked like, since I had to fill in and make sense of a low resolution image.

A detail of the shoulder. I like the texture of the erased lines.

Detail of the face and hand.

Detail of the fringed blanket. The blanket didn't exist in the original photo but the composition needed something black in that shape. I suppose I could have made it anything; a backpack, a roofing shingle, a large sheet of nori. But I went for the obvious. The fringe was fun, especially the white spaces between the threads which took on an unexpected stained glass effect.

Wednesday, December 13, 2017

I mentioned a few days ago that I was having some trouble in the studio and planned to simply draw a portrait of Berthe Morisot from a photo. It's been slow going; first, because it's quite large, and second, because I had to build myself a support wall for my studio space, and I don't have a car. Which meant walking down to Bauhaus (which is like Lowe's, except they don't finance the Republican Party) and carrying back my supplies in 2 trips. I'm proud to say I built a strong support out of foam, which I can easily disassemble when/if I move studios. I'm making only one change, and that is to replace the very squeaky top foam layers (the blue stuff) with a cheap roll of cork (which is sold to go under wooden floorboards to stop them from squeaking).

The back of the support wall in my studio space (look at the cool arched ceilings!)

The support wall with the very beginning of the Berthe Morisot sketch stuck to it with bulldog clips and enormous staples that function like tacks. The system works!

Anyway, here is a detail of the portrait in progress.

Portrait in progress of Impressionist artist Berthe Morisot, drawn from an old photograph. By Ciana Pullen / St. Rhinocéros

Here are two lookalikes I'll bet you've never considered: Don Knotts and Mick Jagger. Not twins exactly, but they could be brothers.

Donn Knotts (as Barney Fife) and Mick Jagger.

Ingenious blogger Scott Fertig noticed the similarities
between the facial features of Don Knotts and Mick Jagger-- fish
lips, pronounced folds at the barrel of the mouth, flat brows over
heavily lidded eyes-- and superimposed Don Knotts' face on Mick Jagger's body. Yes, it's freaky. It's also a
perfect example of just how much difference the neck and shoulders
make: put Don Knott's face with a different neck, shoulders and
posture, and he looks like a completely different person.

"Mick Knotts," via ScottFertig.
[Image: Black & white photo of Mick Jagger posing with
undershirt and low-slung jeans against a brick wall, one hand
resting on the opposite shoulder with his arm across his chest.
But his face has been replaced with Don Knotts's smirking face
under Mick's feathered rock-star hairdo.]

Let's look at the real Don Knotts as Barney Fife, and his own neck, spine and shoulders. He gives the impression of a
turtle.

Don Knotts as Barney Fife. [image description: moving gif of Barney looking out the police station window through the blinds, then turning around, leading his body around with his nose and craned out neck. He starts back in surprise to find a cartoonish mobster pointing a gun in his face.]

That's because he rounds forward in his lower-mid back
(where a bra would fasten), while his shoulders are narrow and sloped,
all creating the illusion of a rounded "shell." His thin
neck attaches to the front of this structure rather than sitting
tall atop his spine. His receding chin and high, sloping
forehead create a smooth curve from his collar bone to his crown,
just as a turtle's head would be jutting forward and curving up. The posture allows
his characters to appear bedraggled and exasperated, even though he was a very
high-energy performer. Without his characteristically large ears poking out over his tapered neck and thin, hunched shoulders, he just wouldn't be
Don Knotts.

Now contrast his posture and spine with Mick Jagger's. Where Knotts was a turtle, Jagger is an open Jack-in-the-box, as if his spine is a spring
attached to his hips, full of coiled tension and always ready to
snap back the other direction. He even emphasizes his spring-loaded posture with
the actual tension of skin-tight clothes.

Mick Jagger, 1972, photo by Bob Gruen, via
MorrisonHotel,
via AnthonyLuke.
[Image description: Black & white action shot of Jagger
performing live against a black background. His upper torso is
shown in profile, leaning forward, arms reaching out to grasp
the microphone, his head thrown back and turned toward the
camera with his mouth open in mid-song and his eyes cast
downward.]

Though his shoulders are narrow like Knotts' they appear square because of his posture. He also
differs from Knotts in that his head is extremely large for his
shoulders and his big hair exaggerates it. To support his big old
noggin, he has a thicker more muscular neck. He isolates his jaw
forward and tilted up, as if the bottom of his mouth is filled with
liquid he doesn't want to spill. Besides giving him an insolent appearance, the habitual upward tilt of his
chin emphasizes the width and
tension of his neck, reminding one of the tense throat of his
screaming onstage persona.

Mick Jagger. Can't find the photographer, via
artsmeme.com
[Image description: black & white shot of Mick Jagger
sitting in a casual suit shown from crotch upward, with one knee
up and to the side, one wrist leaning on the knee, the other
hand near his hip with his elbow out. A backward C-shaped curve
is formed by the fly of his pants, the buttons of his shirt, his
open jacket and lapels, his spine and neck, and extending
through his head held at an angle. His mouth is open and brow
kind of scrunched like he's thinking hard and in mid-speech.]

Have you ever noticed how goofy a cutout photo of a head looks, floating in space without its neck and shoulders?

Have you ever had to recognize a faraway person without your glasses, based only on their fuzzy outline and quality of movement, as a brown shape with points?

Then you already know how crucial the gestures of the neck, spine and shoulders are to a person's look. Maybe a portrait only alludes to the neck and shoulders with a sketchy line,
maybe the curve of shoulders is only visible under a puffy coat and
scarf, but what is alluded to has to be correct. When the rest of the body isn't shown, it's only through the neck and shoulders that we get a hint of a person's physical condition (muscular or soft, stocky or lanky, young or old). Even more telling are the
person's habitual body gestures: tight or relaxed, meek or
aggressive, withdrawn or wide open. After all, our lives are written on our bodies.

Learning how to really see the neck, spine and shoulders isn't only a matter of rigorous draftsmanship.
It's what makes people say, "wow, you really captured this person!" The secret
is noticing the unique characteristics of how a person holds
themselves, then re-creating that energy on paper with pose, linework
and composition.

If you're drawing from photos and you've never observed the subject in person, then you're already at a disadvantage. You've got to practice with live subjects so you can interact with them and see them in motion. If you're too chicken to try that, then at least draw from a video or gif instead of a photo. YouTube clips of singers are great for this purpose, as they are especially expressive and active.

Here, give it a try. Watch this video of Nina Simone performing, and really look at her neck and shoulders. Notice how her head leans forward with an intense
concentration on an imaginary horizon, then she levels the audience with a direct stare, every so often throwing her head back
and to the side impatiently. Her chin recedes into her neck,
creating the general appearance of a serious frown and accentuating
the striving forward thrust of her face. The sides of her long neck descend
in sinewy muscles into strong rounded shoulders.

[Video Description: Black & white 1960 video of Nina
Simone performing live, "I Loves You Porgy," at a piano. She wears an open tank top dress and
plays a lingering soulful version of the song, then when
she's done she leaps up from the piano bench, bows, and raises her arms to the audience.]

Even actresses who fit into Hollywood's cookie-cutter definition of conventional beauty have individually distinct ways of carrying their head, neck and shoulders. Let's compare the posture and physiognomy of Kristen
Stewart and Jennifer Lawrence.

Jennifer Lawrence's neck is
nearly the same width as her face, and though long, is unusually
thick for a Hollywood woman. It also sits squarely atop her
shoulders and stretches straight up and down, the kind of posture
our moms are always wishing we had. Her head is centered atop her neck
and her face is usually lifted and facing straight forward, giving
her the appearance of a noble cadet. Her thick upright neck and
posture are likely what makes her appearance credible as an athletic and proudly defiant participant in the Hunger Games. It also
likely plays a part in her forthright public persona (people like to
say, "she's so real!") This posture of integrity makes it seem righteous rather than sleazy when she flips the bird at a
formal event.

Jennifer Lawrence flips someone off at the
Academy Awards.

Jennifer Lawrence in The Hunger Games.

Jennifer Lawrence's typical posture.

Now, Kristen Stewart. Her neck is shorter but thinner. Her
shoulders are also square but slightly narrower, hinting at the
overall sporty-but-delicate look of her frame. Most importantly,
though, is the way she holds her head forward and tilted. When
caught candidly, the line between her shoulders are typically at an
opposing angle to her head. She also holds her head forward from her shoulders but
tipped back at an angle, as if weighed down by her curtain of hair.
Her hair actually plays a part in a habitual Kristen Stewart gesture
since famously flips it all over to one side.
Her jaw is sharply delineated from her neck and ends in a pointed
chin that appears to jut forward with contrariness because of the
forward thrust of her neck. The limp outstretched neck, jutting chin
and jaw, and opposing angles give her a lazily rebellious look that,
combined with her naturally down-turned mouth, I find appealing (but
apparently rubs a lot of people the wrong way). Kristen Stewart, for
instance, would come across as sleazy or disrespectful if she
flipped the bird on the red carpet.

Kristen Stewart looking straight ahead with shoulders askew.

Kristen Stewart [Image Description: Stewart
leans forward with her elbows on a table (out of frame), her
mouth open mid-speech]

Here she is posing on the red carpet with a very typical
posture for her. Notice how her jaw is jutting to the side but her
head is upright, as if she is being pulled offstage in one of those
old Vaudeville shows with a shepherd's crook around her neck. It is
markedly different from any of Jennifer Lawrence's typical red
carpet poses. An astute portrait artist would also note that her
ears are unusually high up on her head; the size and position of
ears help identify a person, too!

Kristen Stewart at some red carpet thing

I find that even when you cannot really see the clear shape
of the ears, neck and shoulders, the visual hints are still
there:

-What kind of shadows do the chin and jaw cast on the
neck? The deep shadow of a jutting shelf-like chin and jaw? or the
soft shading and under-lighting of a chin that melts into the
throat?

Left: At the Railroad, by Manet. Middle: Girl With a Pearl Earring, by Vermeer. Right: Frank Gentile, by Alice Neel.

-What kind of shadow is formed at the base of the
neck, where it attaches to the collarbone?

Left: Head of an Arab, by John Singer Sargent. Middle: Madame X (detail), by John Singer Sargent. Right: Clara J. Mathers, by Thomas Eakins

-Do the ears, if covered, affect the structure of
the hair in a way that hints at their position? Can you see the
earlobes or earrings? How does the jaw attach to the ear? Is there a
shadow?

-Where do the shoulders intersect with the neck and
jaw (and how far down from the earlobes)? If they're slouching they
should intersect close to the ears and jaw and the neck should
appear in front of the shoulders. If they are back and down, they'll
intersect with the base of the neck.

-Where is the
collarbone? Imagine the base of the neck is a flat circular plane
from the knob at the spine between neck and shoulders to the
collarbone (the clean disc left by a guillotine, maybe?). When
slouching, the spine-knob is thrust upward and the sternum down,
pitching the imaginary disc forward and vertical. Thus the
collarbone will be low and form a down-arrow shape. When sitting
upright and level with the viewer, however, the disc is horizontally
level and the collar bone is lined up right in front of the
neck-knob and only slightly below the intersection of neck and
shoulders.

Left: At the Theater, by Mary Cassat. Middle: Self Portrait as the Allegory of Painting, by Artemisia Ghentileschi. Right: Detail of a portrait by John Singer
Sargent.

-Do the shadows at the sides of the neck describe
its width and breadth? Often hair will dangle around the neck,
obscuring the sides. But the shadows it casts can be deep on a thin
neck or shallow on a broad neck. How does the hair
fall around the neck and shoulders? If it falls straight down from
the head, the place where it lands on the neck and shoulders can
help indicate that the head is in front of or straight above the
collarbone.

-Do the shadows at the sides of the neck describe
its width and breadth? Stiff collars can obscure the neck
as well, but the way they fit around the neck, snugly or loosely,
can be described by the shadows they cast. The degree of forward
pitch of the collar can also be very descriptive of
posture.

Finally, if you pay attention to the neck and
shoulders before you start, you can manipulate the pose and angle so
that any personally identifying characteristics of their posture can
be highlighted. Take, for instance, the flower-stalk-like neck in
the Bust of Nefertiti. Why draw her from this angle, with her hair
hanging down in a wig (just imagine it)...

Bust of Nefertiti [Image description: a color
photograph of the famous ancient Egyptian painted sculpture of
Queen Nefertiti viewed from the front, with what appears to be a
thin but average length neck and upside-down-trapezoidal hat]

...when you could choose this other angle, with her long neck
exposed and a big hat creating a visual X marking the spot of her
regal eyes?

Profile view of the Bust of Nefertiti. [Image
description: photograph of the same sculpture, taken from the
side in profile. Reveals an extremely long neck pitched forward
to an upraised jaw and chin. Viewed from the side, the hat
extends up and back at an opposing angle to the neck, creating
an imaginary intersection right at her eyes and a sense of
elegant balance. The trapezoidal tulip shape of the hat
contrasting with the long thin neck also creates the illusion of
a flower on a stalk.]

And, for a different take, here's
1980s Arnold Swartzenegger. He had a famously thick neck and
body-builder muscles; the protruding barrel of his mouth resolutely
marked the spot where the wad of muscles stopped being neck and
started being face. So why pose him like this...

Arnold Swartzenegger, c. 80's [Image
Description: color photo of Arnold's face, shoulders and upper
torso at a three-quarter angle facing the viewer. His shoulders
are rounded forward and his face lifted and at a bowed angle,
obscuring much of his neck.]

...when you could choose this angle and pose? It's so much more "Arnold."

Film still from or promotional image for The
Terminator. [Image Description: color photo of Arnold's face,
shoulders and chest in character as the Terminator. He wears
sunglasses an holds a gun straight up in front and to the side,
echoing the width and position of his neck. He wears a
wide-lapel leather coat with a popped collar that sits flush
against the back of his neck and skull, creating a visual X at
the lumpy barrel of his mouth. The sides of the coat's neck
opening extend down over his chest, continuing and emphasizing
the line of his neck. Lazers in the background radiate outward
from a point visually marking his collar bone.]

What about the rest of the face? Stay tuned for the rest of my Notes on Portraiture series.

Wednesday, December 6, 2017

Places Journal ran this article by Despina Stratigakos about the massive erasure of women in architecture, both historically and ongoing. It's an interesting read, and a frustrating one. There is no art form quite so married to political power, wealth and elitism as architecture, simply by virtue of what and who is needed to build a building. It's impossible to imagine architecture ever divorcing itself of the rich and powerful, so it is inexplicable to my why anyone would feel threatened by a more democratic approach to its study. But now that I've said it, I'd like to imagine architecture suddenly running rogue, with school basketball teams commissioning monumental museums and the lady behind the counter at Walgreens taking a day off to commission a public park and monument in the old industrial waterfront.

Tuesday, December 5, 2017

I thank my lucky stars to have a studio. It's been a long time coming, but two months ago I finally (FINALLY) secured a small space to work. A basement space with dim two windows that I share with another artist, and a honeycomb of other studios leading off in either direction. I wouldn't say it's a "community," because no one seems to talk to each other, unless it's about the rent. Which is ok I guess; after all, not all communities are a blessing.

But I've been avoiding my studio space because Friday I had a really, really bad day painting. The promising piece just got worse and worse, and now I'm very much stuck. Things snowballed, I felt like I couldn't do anything right, and all my art ideas were stupid. Which makes it difficult to regroup and try something else, no?

Saturday and Sunday rolled by, and I reasoned that since it was the weekend I didn't need to go in and work. Right? Then Monday I tried to gather source material to go in another direction before heading off to the studio, and instead I had a bit of a breakdown. Feeling awful about my art was piled on top of a steady drip horrifying world news, and to top it off I got some pretty bad news about the German tax system-- that is, the amount of money that I could expect to earn with art if I work my butt off is exactly the amount of money you can't make without going into debt to the German government. You have to earn either less than $4000 or more than about $25,000. What is the deal with that, Germany? What are you trying to do? I ended up crying, then spent the evening fixing some old broken CSS on my blog.

Today I'm ready to head to my studio again (after posting this). I'm gearing up to do a big charcoal portrait of the Impressionist painter Berthe Morisot from a photograph (with a few other old photos, for reference). It's almost too basic. I don't usually draw from one photo; drawing from life is best if I can manage, but I usually form a composite from several photos or draw from a video snippet to avoid simply copying someone else's flat image like a human Xerox machine. And there's no particular concept, it's just a portrait, which is What I Do Best. But maybe that's what I need right now.

Berthe Morisot.

When I was a Junior in art school, a Senior got pregnant, which really derailed her thesis work. She got pretty stuck and panicky, so she started knitting a lot just to get her mind back to basics. Her thesis ended up being a massive abstract sculpture made of yards and yards of knit fabric. It was pretty good, too. That has always stuck with me.

Friday, December 1, 2017

When I was 13 my popular friend from camp told me that if a boy saw a stray hair between a girl's eyebrows, even one, he would actually vomit with disgust. I believed her for about 5 minutes, then reasoned that if this were true surely I'd have seen it occur. Especially considering the company I kept.

But long gone are the days when a breezy beauty writer could flabbergast their audience by commanding, "Put down those tweezers..." The brow renaissance (brennaissance?) may even be inching like two bushy caterpillars toward its dénouement. I will miss the delicious twistedness of seeing otherwise normal looking faces with maniacal black brows painted onto them. During the scant four years since I applied my first ever brow product, I tried a few looks in the privacy of my bathroom, like brushing all the hairs straight up and gelling them in place á la "Olsen twin natural look" or outlining them with pale concealer to make them "pop."

It is only now that I appreciate the forbidden natural flaws of the brow. They grow in swirly patterns, like the hair on our scalps! Sometimes they have no real edge, like two nebulae. Sometimes they're wizard-like.

Since most of the great Western portraits of the past depict at least somewhat natural brows-- unplucked, unfilled and timeless-- they show something important that fashion photos often don't: you can see the curvature of the skull underneath the brow hairs.

When we look at brows, we're seeing not only the color of the hair but also the skin in between those hairs. The hairs cast a shadow on the skin, so the skin will look lighter where the hair is sparse and where the skin curves out toward the viewer:

Carolus Duran (detail), by John Singer Sargent

They wrap around the lumps of the skull like a mountain trail. As the perspective shifts, their shape can change drastically:

Emily Sargent (detail), by John Singer Sargent

A Spanish Woman (detail), by John Singer Sargent

Brows can be both lighter and darker than skin. Pay close attention:

Admiral Augustus Keppel (detail) by Sir Joshua Reynolds

The density of hairs can form swirls like calligraphy-- especially at the inner corners. They aren't a solid shape that's filled in. Look for the planes and patches of color that the hairs form as they undulate like schools of fish:

Young Girl Wearing a White Muslin Blouse (detail), by John Singer Sargent

Often the tail of the brow is indiscernible and melts into the valley between the brow and the outer corner of the eye:

Caspar Goodrich (detail), by John Singer Sargent

Sometimes the inner corners melt into the shadows at the bridge of the nose:

Portrait of Victorine-Louise Meurent (detail), by Eduard Manet

Don Sebastian de Morra (detail), by Diego Velasquez

They can look thinner or thicker, shorter or longer depending upon how the light hits them:

The Daughters of Sir Edward Darley Boit (detail), by John Singer Sargent

Brows are three-dimensional. They have highlights and shadows when they stick out:

Portrait of Victorine-Louise Meurent (detail) by Eduard Manet

Brows describe the bridge of the nose:

Portrait of a Negro Buttoning His Shirt (detail), by Maurice Quentin de la Tour

The edges of brows melt into the skin-- there's rarely a harsh line. The color blends, and often the brushstrokes pull the colors together:

Juan de Pareja (detail), by Diego Velasquez

The Dwarf Francisco Lezcano, Called "El Nino de Vallecas" (detail), by Diego Velasquez

Even the darkest brow is rarely as dark as the novice painter believes it to be. Too stark of a contrast with the skin (the "wooly worm effect," as my high school art teacher called it) can be the tell-tale sign of an amateur:

Self Portrait (detail), by Sir Joshua Reynolds

What about the rest of the face? Stay tuned for more in this series of posts called Ciana's Notes on Portraiture (see Neck, Shoulders & Spine here).

Wednesday, November 29, 2017

For the last several months I've been collaborating with my friend Anna Guengerich, who works in the Anthropology Department at Vanderbilt University. Many people are familiar with the ancient Chachapoya of the Andes because of their stunning, gravity-defying tombs built into cliffs above the clouds. Less well known are their daily lives, which Anna's archaeological team has recently uncovered in rural Peru. It turns out their houses were as surprising as their tombs, and the weavings that survive are extremely impressive. The Chachapoya were eventually conquered by the Incan Empire, like many other cultures of the Andes.

Where the Chachapoya once lived, today the Museo Leymebamba houses their artifacts, reconstructed buildings, and the famous huddled mummies. Unfortunately looting of the ancient sites in the area is a major problem. Adventure tourists and amateur archeologists still hunt for new sites and rediscover existing sites, often with the help of unofficial local tourguides. Even when the participants remain respectful of the discoveries, locals in a desperate economy often follow in their wake and loot the items to sell.

Anna and I have been collaborating on a coloring book that the Museo Leymebamba and local educators will use not only to share what Anna and her team have discovered, but also to educate kids about the importance of protecting ancient artifacts and housing them safely. Anna wrote the story, then gave me a crash course in the daily life of the Chachapoya so I could accurately illustrate it. I really enjoyed figuring out how to convey a world where it's normal to grill up a guinea pig, footrace barefoot in the cold, and for your grandma to heal you with magic when you're sick.

The book hasn't yet gone to press, but I'm sharing a frame here. The main character's dad has just gotten a job as a guard at the Museo Leymebamba, and she's sitting at the edge of a lake wondering what's so special about the artifacts, and who the Chachapoya were. Little does she know it's a magical time-traveling lake....

A frame from a coloring book about the ancient Chachapoya, written by Anna Guengerich and illustrated by Ciana Pullen.

Thursday, July 13, 2017

Breakfast in Amalfi, Italy, by Ciana Pullen / St. Rhinocéros. It seems Italians don't "do breakfast" any more than a pastry and espresso. Which is the only reason we were drawn in by an ad for a "full English breakfast" obviously for tourists only. But when morning rolled around, it was nowhere to be found! We settled on a profoundly bad breakfast at this place, watching groups of English tourists carrying cottage-floral print umbrellas and complaining about small cultural differences, followed by German tour groups using sparkling new walking poles and wearing coordinating neon sport-raincoats, probably not intentionally. Luckily, we finally got our full English breakfast in England earlier this year.

Comments Policy:

No sexist, racist and offensive slurs, threats or violent rhetoric. Though this is not a "safe space," you must be respectful to others. Disagreement, though, is encouraged. Finally, I don't want to spend my time re-inventing the wheel, so this blog *begins* with the assumption that various social oppressions are real and valid; that art movements post-1880 are, in fact, "art;" and that any artist who has taken the time and expense to plan, make, market and show their art-- no matter how shocking, expensive, or crude in appearance-- is deserving of consideration. This is not up for debate. Have fun!